ALLA GUELBER, 16 FEB 2010

I have a friend who is working on a Master's degree in ecological design. Last winter, the weather was getting him down, and he was getting frustrated feeding the industrial machine in the big city. Heirloom varieties of plants, such as these jewel-toned carrots, help to preserve genetic diversity - and taste better too!

He took off to a small farm in central Mexico to study permaculture because he saw it as one of the only viable solutions out of our dependence on fossil fuels and concerns with food security.

Sure, buying locally, choosing organic and looking for seasonal produce is important for reducing our carbon footprint and supporting farmers, but buying organic is to permaculture like foreign aid is to international development. Foreign aid is an important part of the picture, but it doesn't get at solving the root of the problem. (Ok, maybe the metaphor's a bit of a stretch, but large-scale organic agriculture isn't the end all and be all solution. It all depends on the context).

I could not fully understand what set permaculture apart from all the other concepts connected to sustainable agriculture until I recently took an "Introduction to Permaculture" course organized by another friend, Adrian Buckley at Big Sky Permaculture.

According to the Intro course instructor, Jesse Lemieux from Denman Island: "Permaculture design is a system of assembling conceptual, material, and strategic components in a pattern which functions to benefit life in all its forms. It seeks to provide a sustainable and secure place for living things on this earth."

Not only does the permaculture philosophy address some of most deeply rooted environmental issues by teaching us how to be self-sufficient and get ourselves off the addiction to fossil fuels. It provides a paradigm for rethinking and re-envisioning how we want to live and work in our communities.

The word permaculture is a composite of permanent - culture. It is a design system that integrates natural systems with human habitat and land use patterns from nature. The composite title is a bit of a metaphor for the way different elements in the system are combined.

Guilding in permaculture means putting parts together that can work together to develop a beneficial relationship. For example, if you plant beans, corn and squash close together, the beans can climb up on the stalk of the corn, using it for support. The beans also fix nitrogen in the soil, and helping the squash and corn grow. Since the squash plant grows out sideways, it shades the roots of the bean and corn plant, allowing them to withstand the heat of summer. Meanwhile, all these plants grow at different heights with leaves of various shapes, which lets them to benefit from maximum sunlight without competing with each other.

Permaculture can be a system for sustainable agriculture, but it goes much further than that, looking at pattern and relationships as the starting point for understanding and designing any kind of system.

Clever examples of this include building a shelf inside a greenhouse so that chickens can roost inside and use their body heat to keep it warm as night temperatures drop, or setting up an aquaculture system in an old swimming pool. It's about using what you've got in a smart way to grow food, use less energy, and establish beneficial relationships between different elements in the system. Taking advantage of different angles of insolation for maximum sunlight is one of the ways permaculture encourages beneficial relationships

According to Adrian, "Permaculture is concerned with the simple and practical steps leading to the design and planning of self-sufficient resilient human systems be them industrial, economic, our communities or our households."

The permaculture ethic stipulates an order for priority when creating any design, so that any decision made looks at 1.) earth care; 2.) people care and 3.) return of surplus.

This means that the first consideration when making decisions is the impact it will have on the environment. It is not considered an externality, as it is in most economic decisions. The third tenet of returning surplus back into the system is applicable to both physical outputs (such as the surplus of manure being returned back to the soil) as well as social and economic outputs (a portion of profit reinvested in the community; passing on skills that you have to the next generation).

To me, permaculture as a comprehensive design philosophy that looks to ensure self-sufficiency and sustenance for human communities in a deeply integrated way with the natural environment offers one of the most optimistic ways that we can actively deal with so many converging systems problems: climate change, peak oil, disconnection from nature, disconnection from our food, poverty, and urban sprawl (among others).

For those interested in learning more, check out Big Sky Permaculture and their upcoming 2-day introductory course.